GMCDI In the News

April 11, 2007
Anglos' future under microscope
Calling all english speakers. Education, demographics, employment, services among
items on agenda at tonight's forum
The Gazette
Jeff Heinrich

Montreal anglophones will converge at a downtown hotel tonight for a major forum on the community's future.

Six major topics are on the agenda: education; demographics; social participation; arts, culture and heritage; economic development and employment; and health and social services.

Anglos and allophones who speak English and live in communities around Montreal - including the West Island, Montreal East, central Montreal, Laval and the South Shore - are invited to attend.

The forum, at the Bonaventure Hilton, is organized by the Greater Montreal Community Development Initiative, part of the Quebec Community Groups Network, which comprises 24 anglo community organizations.

Anglos in the city are at a crossroads in their history, forum organizers say. Their numbers are stagnant, unemployment is high, and there's a widening divide between older, wealthier residents and younger, poorer immigrant families.

''Not in a long time has it been so important for English-speakers to play an active role in public life," Sylvia Martin-Laforge, the network's executive director, said in a statement.

"Every community member who participates in the public forum, or who emails their comments to us, strengthens the mandate of this project to determine the future of the English-speaking communities of the greater Montreal area."

About 400,000 Montrealers have English as their mother tongue; another 300,000 allophones speak English regularly. One of every two anglos was born outside Quebec; one in three is an immigrant.

The communities with the largest concentrations of anglos - about 75 per cent - are Montreal West, Cote St. Luc, Westmount, Hudson, Pointe Claire, Dollard des Ormeaux and
Beaconsfield.

Tonight's forum builds on research papers debated at five smaller consultations early last month in five Montreal communities. It will be followed by six more meetings this month and in May, organized around each research topic.

A final report is to be issued this summer.

The federal Canadian Heritage Department is funding the initiative with a $165,000 grant.

As a minority, Quebec anglos feel they're treated less well than the francophone minority outside Quebec, and are pessimistic about being able to live in English here in the near future, according to a comparative survey Decima Research did a year ago for Canadian Heritage.

Anglos in Quebec also feel far more shut out of getting government jobs than francophones outside Quebec feel they do, the survey found.

The forum tonight is in the Verdun Room of the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel, 900 de la Gauchetiere St. W., from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Email the consultation organizers with suggestions at gmcdi@qcgn.ca. For more on the project and to consult its discussion papers, go to www.qcgn.ca/greatermontrealinitiative.